Amount in Controversy

Every jurisdictional fight in the Texas Business Court eventually becomes an argument about a number. The statute sets that number at more than $5,000,000 for most claims under Tex. Gov't Code § 25A.004(b), and it tells you what to leave out of the calculation. Interest, statutory damages, exemplary damages, penalties, attorney's fees and court costs do not count. What counts is the compensatory value of the claim.

Whose claims, and when

H.B. 40 added § 25A.004(i), which provides that the amount in controversy is the total of all claims of all parties joined in the action. That resolved a live question. A defendant with a $3,000,000 counterclaim facing a $2,500,000 petition no longer has to argue that the two should be read together, because the statute says they are. This widens the door, and it gives a removing party a reason to look at the whole pleading file rather than only the live claim against it.

Timing is the other half. The amount is measured as of filing, on the facts as they stood then. A claim that grows over the life of a contract is not valued by its future potential.

Black Mountain and the accrual problem

The Eighth Division faced this directly in Black Mountain SWD v. NGL Water Solutions Permian, 2025 Tex. Bus. 24 (8th Div. June 30, 2025). The dispute concerned a royalty obligation. The party invoking jurisdiction wanted the court to value the whole disputed royalty stream over the remaining life of the agreement, which would comfortably have cleared the threshold. The court declined. It measured instead the royalties that had accrued between execution and the filing of suit, found no more than $4.5 million, and remanded.

The reasoning travels well beyond oilfield water disposal. A long-term supply agreement, a licence, a management contract or a lease each generates a stream of obligations, and a plaintiff who sues early has a smaller case than the same plaintiff suing after five years of accrual. If you want the business court, watch the calendar and plead the accrued figure with arithmetic rather than adjectives.

Pleading and proof

A good faith pleading of the amount ordinarily controls, but it is not conclusive. Where the opposing party challenges the figure, the court will look at evidence. Attach the invoices. Show the calculation. Where the claim is for injunctive or declaratory relief, value the right you are asking the court to protect and explain how you got there, because a bare assertion that the relief is worth more than $5 million gives a skeptical judge nothing to hold onto.

One exception removes the arithmetic entirely. Under § 25A.004(c), if a publicly traded company is a party to an action described in subsection (b), there is no threshold at all.